Publishing startup Tablo books $400K

Tablo, an online publishing community, said Thursday that it has received $400,000 in seed funding. The investors include Paul Reining, former CEO of Catch Group, Kevin Hale, a partner at Y Combinator and author John Buck. Also, Reining is joining the company as a director and advisor.

Investors include Kevin Hale, Partner at Y Combinator, and John Buck, one of Tablo’s most successful authors who reinvested his book’s earnings into the business. Lead investor Paul Reining, former CEO of Catch Group, also joins Tablo as a Director and Advisor.

The seed funding follows astonishing organic growth in the company, with 10,000 authors from 100 different countries already signing up. In 2013, Tablo was also selected to take part in AngelCube, a mentor-driven startup accelerator program, which only accepts 10 startups a year.
At age 19, Ash Davies founded Tablo in 2012, with an aim to shake up the traditional publishing model.

“Tablo is a place where you can create, share and discover new books. It’s an online publishing community that allows authors to connect with readers while they write.

“I started working on Tablo after I struggled to publish my own book. A lot of people think that, because publishing has gone digital, that it’s simple. It’s still incredibly complicated and expensive though, and it’s even harder for an author to have their work discovered.

“We’ve built the best publishing tool in the world, where publishing a book to major bookstores is as easy as publishing a blog. Authors can drop in a document or write in the cloud and reach the iBookstore and Amazon with a single click.

“The key piece of Tablo though is the underlying social network – the profiles, groups and online communities – that help authors build a following for their work. The next bestseller can now be discovered before it’s been published.

“Tablo lives in the cloud. Writers can create their next masterpiece from any browser window or mobile device, anywhere in the world, whenever they want.

“Best of all, authors receive 100% of royalties and have complete control over who can view their work.”

The funding round will be used to further grow the team and develop new features. Tablo will now turn its attention to building social community features on the platform, making it easy for authors to connect with each other, share their writing with passionate fans, and make writing a less lonely pursuit.

“Ash has already proven he has the innovative ability to solve problems and create real commercial opportunities with Tablo”, said Lead investor Paul Reining.

“What really impressed me is his longer term vision for the writing and publishing industry and importantly his ability to execute upon this vision.”